


A Conversation That Needed To Be Had

by afteriwake



Series: And Now I'm Learning You [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-15 01:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2210925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four days after Khan leaves it appears Sherlock is ready to talk to her, and what they talk about are things that needed to be settled between them before they began the long wait for the business Sherlock had been on to be finished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Conversation That Needed To Be Had

**Author's Note:**

> I have had this sitting on my computer completely written for a while, and now that I finally finished the other story I can share it. I enjoyed this one a lot and I hope all of you do too.

It had been four days now since Khan had left and she had thrown herself into work, but there was no work to do today. She'd woken up early because sleeping by herself again still felt very strange, and finally she'd dragged herself to the kitchen to make breakfast for her and her new house guest. Sherlock had not been very talkative when he woke up, at least with her, and frankly she had been okay with that. But as she entered the room he was using it seemed that, finally, Sherlock was ready to talk. He was awake and looking at her, studying her. “You miss him,” he said quietly.

She nodded as she placed his food on the nightstand by the bed. He had been able to move upstairs, but he was still weak. She had been told any day now he'd be back to himself, though. “Yes, I do.”

“And it must be disconcerting, having me here.”

A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “I've had this conversation with him, only reversed, when we were in Scotland. It's a bit strange, but I'll manage.”

Sherlock sat up more in the bed. “I could always hide out at Mycroft's home, if this will be too strange. If this will cause you pain.”

“It's not that. I'm used to his presence here. I'm used to him leaning against my kitchen counter, talking to me as I cook. I'm used to him sleeping beside me and then waking up while I'm still asleep and instead of getting out of bed holding me close until I wake up. I'm used to the first thing I realize upon waking up is that I'm not alone, and one of the last things I think about before I sleep is how glad I am that Khan's there. It's just strange trying to get used to him not being here. But anyway. I'd rather have you here so I can at least see for myself how you're doing.” He moved his legs over slightly and she took that as an invitation to sit on the edge of his bed. “Are you doing all right?”

He nodded. “My appetite is back, at least a little bit. I think this morning I might actually finish the entire meal.”

“That's good,” she said with a smile. “To be honest, I thought you'd be ravenous once you woke up.”

“I had thought as much as well, but I suppose not eating much these last few months had some effects.” He picked up the plate. “Aside from bleeding all over the place I didn't look very good when I came to your morgue, did I?”

“No, you didn't. You're too thin and you were quite haggard. I think the comatose state you were in probably helped quite a bit, as did the serum.”

“He explained that somewhat,” Sherlock said. “I can deduce any number of things about people, but I never would have thought he was...superhuman, I suppose is the best way of describing it.”

“He just likes to say he's superior in every aspect,” she said with a laugh. “I think most people think he's a braggart when he says it, but it keeps them from asking any further about just how he's superior, unless they're a bit plucky. And at that point he's usually annoyed enough to go into a few of the key ways without going into the fact he was genetically engineered to be better.”

“He did seem rather annoyed at what we were doing, Mycroft and I,” he replied. “I gather he yelled at Mycroft for not including him in the conversation about the threat to you, and then he called me a bloody idiot for getting myself into a position where I ended up dying. He said if it had been him this whole situation would have played out differently, and from now on I was to hide out here and he was going to fix this mess. He seemed quite determined.”

She sobered a bit. “He's only doing it to keep me safe. He doesn't care about John or Greg or Mrs. Hudson, or even you. He knows as long as that network isn't in tatters I'm not safe, and he can do a better job of eliminating it than you can because it's very hard to actually hurt him, whereas if this whole event showed us anything it's just how easily you could fail and actually end up dead.” She paused. “Again, I mean.”

“That was my second time dying, if you want to look at it that way,” he said, taking a bite of his food.

“Faking your death doesn't count,” she replied. “You've died once, which is one time more than I'd like.”

“Everyone dies eventually,” he replied after he had swallowed. 

“I know,” she said with a sigh. “But if you had died and stayed dead I don't think I would have dealt with that well. You would have died saving me and...” She trailed off. “At least now we don't need to know how that might have played out.”

“I am quite important to you,” he said quietly.

“Yes, you are,” she said with a nod.

“But not as important as he is.”

She was quiet for a moment. “No, you're not as important to me as he is. I love Khan and he loves me. In our own strange way we fit together perfectly. I would do anything for him, and he would do the same for me. You and I are simply friends, I think. I hope. But I don't fancy you anymore, and even if whatever it is I have with Khan ends for one reason or another I don't think I'll ever fancy you again. I don't think I'll ever put you on a pedestal again, either.”

He nodded slowly. “I had expected that. And I think I'm rather glad for it. You deserve to be happy. I would never have made you happy, even if I did feel the same way towards you that you had felt for me.”

She tilted her head slightly. “I don't know. I would have given you time to sort things out, and I would have been patient. I mean, I do that with Khan. Who's to say it wouldn't have been the same between us?”

“I suppose we'll never know now,” he said before eating more food. “But if there had been anyone I would have even considered attempting that with, it would have been you.”

“Sherlock, did you fancy me? Maybe just a little?” she asked quietly.

He looked surprised for a moment. “What? No. I don't think I'll ever feel that way towards anyone, to be honest. But because you are caring and patient and we are friends I would have considered you first.”

“I think I'm going to take that as a compliment.”

“I think that's the best way to take it,” he said with a slight smile. She found her own smile growing slightly. “Is it going to be hard pretending I'm not here? I mean, to John and Lestrade?”

“Oh, John and I aren't really friends anymore,” she said. “We'd drifted apart by the time he met Khan, and his reaction to _that_ pretty much put the kibosh on what was left of my friendly feelings towards him. He's changed a lot since you left. Not pleasantly, either.”

“I didn't realize,” he said quietly.

“I think he's still hurting,” she replied. “I think he's buried it deep down, but it still hurts him a lot, you not being here. Being face to face with Khan probably didn't help, because I think he thought he was over it all. But he didn't need to act like we were still good enough friends to have any say in who I date, and he didn't need to be rude when I said I knew what I was doing. He was the one who threw Moriarty in my face.”

Sherlock winced. “Do you think he'll take it well when this is all over?”

“Honestly?” she asked. He nodded. “I think when it comes out that you lied to him all this time he's going to be absolutely livid. I think he's going to leave you very bruised and quite possibly bloody as well. And then he's going to be extremely happy, once the anger has passed. He keeps hoping for a miracle. You'll be handing him one on a silver platter.”

“I thought as much,” he said with a sigh. “I'm not relishing that confrontation.”

“Well, you're going to be friends with a nurse and a doctor by the time you're able to reveal you're alive. If anyone can patch you up it will be those two,” she said with a chuckle.

“There are so many fictions we'll need to uphold,” he said.

“It won't be so hard with Amy or Rory or the others,” she said thoughtfully. “I mean, yes, there's the fact that some of them are from an alternate universe and the future as well. But essentially they're the same people they were back home. But it might be harder with Khan, since he's pretending to be your brother.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Carlton is dead, you know. I discovered that when I was traveling. He died a John Doe in Seattle. He had been homeless and he got into an altercation with someone else and they stabbed him. He was twenty-three when he died, give or take. I never got the full details. All I know is one of the homeless men there told me I looked and sounded exactly like a man who had lived there for a time and was murdered.”

“I'm sorry, Sherlock,” she said gently. “I know you weren't close, but he was your brother.”

“To be honest I'm glad,” he replied. “Has Mycroft told you the entire story?”

She shook her head. “No, he hasn't. And neither has Khan, and I suspect he knows it as well.”

He set his plate back on the nightstand. “We were similar, but we were also very dissimilar in many respects. When we were children the pair of us began to exhibit disturbing behaviours, according to my parents. That was when the doctors told my parents I was a high-functioning sociopath. What they had to say about my brother was worse. They advised my mother and father to lock him up in an asylum before he hurt someone.”

“He was violent?” she asked.

Sherlock nodded slowly. “When he was fifteen we found out he was schizophrenic, and the impulses he acted upon were voices in his head. He refused treatment, though. He said he could handle it on his own. And my parents weren't about to have him committed. That would have made them look bad. None of us ever talked about his condition, just as no one said anything about what the doctors had said about me. And for the most part he was very good at appearing normal. But as he got older his grasp of the situation began to slip. He left school and spent all his time in his room towards the end. I suspect he was hurting himself as well, but I can't be certain.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“A few days shy of our seventeenth birthday. He came into my room when I was asleep and tried to wake me up, but I refused to wake up. I pretended to be asleep until he left. And then we all woke up the next morning and found he was gone, and that was the last we'd heard of him.”

“So why are you glad he's dead?” she asked, still slightly confused.

“Because he isn't hurting anymore,” he replied quietly. “I tried, when I was younger, to understand him and how he was. He was my twin, and despite the fact that I don't generally hold feelings of affection for anyone in my family there was a bond between us that hadn't really been severed, even when he left. I should have woken up that night instead of letting him think he was completely alone. Even if all he was going to say was good-bye I shouldn't have been as bad as the rest of my family and ignored him. That failure is on me.”

“Do you blame yourself for it?” she asked.

“For his death?” She nodded. “No. I blame the person who killed him. But I do blame myself for giving up on him just like the rest of my family had.” He was quiet for a few moments. “Can we change the subject now?”

“Of course,” she said with a nod. “What else would you like to talk about?”

“I'm not sure, to be honest. I've spent the last few months not really talking to anyone.” He looked over at her. “You could tell me more of what's been going on with you. Have you traveled anywhere with the Doctor?”

She nodded. “I've been to a few planets, met quite a few aliens, and went back in time to meet Leonardo DaVinci and Plato and to the future when Liz X asked for his help in getting his wife out of trouble. It's all been absolutely brilliant. But I don't travel with him very often.”

“You always seemed to want adventure, to want more of a life than you had,” he said with a frown. “I thought you would have jumped at the chance to travel with him full time.”

“Well, I thought about it, I really did. But when I talked to Rory and Amy about it, about what they might have done differently, they said it was best to have a fulfilling life independent of him. That's what they have now, and they're happier because of it. And I have that, too.”

“I never got to travel anywhere, not really. Not that I've wanted to. I was focusing so much time and energy on undoing everything Moriarty had set up before his death that I didn't care much for anything else.”

Molly's eyes widened. “Wait a moment. He's dead?”

Sherlock nodded slowly. “Yes. I thought you knew.”

“No, your brother hasn't said anything of the sort,” she said. “Exactly how and when did the bastard die?”

He blinked slightly at her words. She knew she had surprised him, but truthfully she hated no person in the world as much as she hated Jim Moriarty. Calling him a bastard was the mildest thing she could have called him. “When I jumped off the roof. He put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. That was why I had to jump. If he'd lived he could have called the snipers off. We would have been locked in a cat and mouse game for who knew how long, but the immediate threat would have been dissolved.”

She gave him a mild glare. “I went up to the roof the next day, and nothing looked amiss.”

“My brother did a good job of cleaning up, I suppose,” he replied.

Suddenly she was quite angry. All the restless night sleep punctuated with nightmares she'd had the first few months after Sherlock left, before Khan popped into her life and she felt safe again, and it all could have stopped with one single conversation. “You could have told me, you know. You were here for weeks! Why is it that both you and your brother felt I didn't deserve to know? Do you know how often I've worried about him? How many times I've thought the moment I was happy he'd find a way to destroy that? Because he destroyed your life, and if he'd found out I helped you he could have destroyed mine as well.”

“I didn't think of that,” he said quietly. “I'm sorry for causing you undue worry.”

“I really began to worry when that man tried to kill Khan and I. If your brother hadn't whisked us away to Scotland and other things had happened I probably would have had panic attacks on a daily basis. I thought for sure he was alive and he knew _you_ were alive and he'd figured out the only way you could have survived was with my help.” She shut her eyes. “I am very cross with the both of you right now, Sherlock.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Khan knows too.”

“I think he and I are going to have an interesting chat about that if he calls me any time soon,” she said in a huff.

“I don't want to cause any problems between the two of you,” Sherlock said. “He only found out the day he left to continue what I had been doing. I imagine he was preoccupied with other things at the time.”

A flash of memory entered her head, of Khan and her in bed, of him taking his time to please her. Being preoccupied was an understatement on Sherlock's part. But that was beside the point. She could see why the three of them hadn't told her. She didn't like it, but she could understand why. Still, it hurt that all of them knew and she had been left in the dark. Finally she opened her eyes and sighed. “I'll try my best to let it go.”

“Still, I apologize. You're one of my few friends. I should have thought about how you not knowing the complete truth would affect you.”

“I'm not as close to you as John is,” she said quietly. “I don't think you thought of me the same way you thought of him before you left.”

“But you deserved the truth. After what you did, you of all people deserved the truth.” He shut his eyes after he was done speaking. “And I could have told you when we began talking again. But I honestly thought you knew.”

“I suppose it's in the past now,” she said quietly. “Do you want to rest?”

“I do, but I also don't. I want to get up and move about, stop being bedridden, but I know I can't. I hate feeling weak. I feel powerless and that grates on my nerves.”

“Well, your body is healed. But you were taking horrid care of yourself, Sherlock. It's going to take some time to get your stamina back. But if you want, we can move downstairs, if you think you're up to it.”

He shook his head. “It would be too inconvenient if I couldn't make it back up the stairs. I'll just rest now, I suppose. We can attempt to have me move about on this floor a little later.”

“All right. Do you want me to take your plate?” she asked, getting up.

He opened up his eyes and glanced at it. “That might be best. I don't think it would taste very appealing when cold.”

“I'll bring you something else later. Is there anything you would prefer?”

“Not that I can think of,” he said as he shook his head. He watched her come over and pick up the plate. “Thank you, Molly.”

“You're welcome, Sherlock,” she said, giving him a small smile. “I'll come check on you in a few hours, all right?”

He nodded. “That's fine.” She made her way to the door and was almost out when he spoke. “Molly?”

“Yes?” she asked, turning to look at him.

“I would do it again. Even if I couldn't be brought back, I would do it again.”

Her smile widened a bit. “I know, and I appreciate it. Now get some rest.” She made her way out of her guest bedroom and headed back down the stairs. That had been a series of conversations they had needed to have, she thought to herself. Now they both knew where they stood with each other. She had hopes that they could get through the long wait ahead of them without wanting to throttle each other now, and that was a very good thing indeed.


End file.
